Your Custom Text Here
Gruff Rhys: Dim Probs
New album: After last year’s acclaimed Sadness Sets Me Free, the ex-Super Furry Animals frontman’s ninth solo LP (meaning ‘no problem’) is a fully Welsh language release, his first since 2019’s Pang!, filled with charming, soothing, catchy folk-rock tunes, but with some darker subjects for current times, the title is an ironic twist
Read more
This year’s selections include some returning veterans at the top of their game as well as some fabulous newcomers
Favourite albums of 2024: Welcome to The Song Bar’s favourite albums of 2024 Part 1. There’s no such thing as ‘best of’ and everything is subjective, but rich seams of originality and quality are certainly here to be enjoyed. Peruse away …
Read more
Gruff Rhys: Sadness Sets Me Free, his 25th album overall
New album: The effortlessly talented Welshman, former Super Furry Animals frontman and all round nice guy returns with a gorgeously bittersweet album of wry humour and fabulous tunes inspired by the joys of writing about sad subjects
Read more
Sweet Baboo: The Wreckage
New album: A very welcome return after five years from Wales’s Stephen Black, who having worked with Gruff Rhys, Cate Le Bon and others, releases a selection of beautiful, gentle folk rock songs of delicious melody, creativity and sensitivity
Read more
A selection of favourite LPs for 2022. See the lists below to go from top row left to right onwards
Favourite albums of 2022: Welcome to the first part of a selection for this year, many of which continue to come to terms with pandemic, climate change and other current issues but also show how music can continue to innovate, surprise and entertain
Read more
Imarhan’s beatiful new album, Aboogi
New album: Mesmerically beautiful third LP by the Algerian tuareg desert quintet, all atwirl with superb vocals, clever layering, intricate guitar work, and a somehow wonderfully entwined guest vocal appearance by Gruff Rhys
Read more
Gruff Rhys – Seeking New Gods
Album review: This seventh solo album by the Super Furry Animals frontman set out as conceptual biography of East Asian active mountain volcano Mount Paektu, but this piano-led set of songs with a 70s psych-pop grandeur also has personal elements, and is produced by Beastie Boys producer Mario C
Read more
Halsey
A mixture of dark and light, hope and hopelessness decorate this week’s huge roundup of releases across many genres, including oddities and eccentricities, passions and playfulness from Emimen to Ivor Cutler, Halsey to Keeley Forsyth
Read more
FKA twigs
The second part of this year’s LP favourites again includes several superb female artists. Also check out the first part published yesterday
Read more
Sampa The Great
Our latest new album selection includes the US grunge pioneers taking a spooky goth turn, another eclectic piece of brilliance from the Welsh wizard, and some African funk from rapper and singer Sampa The Great
Read more
Trash Kit arrive at new Horizons
The latest roundup includes more collaborations via Damon Albarn’s African Express, sharp postpunk from Trash Kit, sensitive songwriting from Jesca Hoop, a classical masterpiece, and more from veteran country singer Willie Nelson
Read more
Dystopia depicted: Gruff Rhys’s album Babelsberg
The first part of our annual roundup of notable albums includes several great debuts by young bands, plus work that reflects dystopian political turmoil, gender issues and growing human relationship with technology
Read more
Modern dystopia: a gif for Gruff Rhys's Babelsberg
Wales and Sweden feature much this week, with interweaving solo artists’ melancholy-pop with the Furry Animals man, Lily Allen and Lykke Li, plus three promising debuts from Jorja Smith, Boy Azooga and Echo Ladies
Read more